Vultures awaited at destination's end

The friends I had in 1980 who urged me to pack up my few belongings and move to Chester County told me many of its excitements and enticements that they hoped would sway my decision.

They told me about the beauty of the land, carved between the Octoraro Creek and the Schuylkill River, how the cultured and cultivated estates of the eastern portion of the county gave way to rolling horse farms in the west and ultimately pleasant, all-American scenes of farmland in the south.

They told me that it was home to fascinating people of intellect and creativity, not only the Wyeth family of artists but also the deep thinkers about life such as Bayard Rustin and the musically inclined such as Samuel Barber, and that those famous people had established a community that appreciated – more or less – things that mattered in life and art.

They told me that there was a sense of mystery that might appeal to me, not only of ghosts and goblins that roamed the Chadds Ford area on the banks of the Brandywine, but also of real life figures like William Wilson, the so-called hermit of Chester County, who disappeared into the wilderness after the conviction – some say wrongly – of his sister Elizabeth, for the murder of her two sons.

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The friends that I had in 1980 who told me these things told me them so compellingly that indeed I did pack up my few belongings and drive them across the Allegheny Mountains to ultimately settle here in West Chester.

They did not tell me about the vultures.

I am not speaking metaphorically about greedy people living here who would swoop in to gorge themselves on their fellow citizens’ symbolic flesh and bones when they hit hard times and found themselves down on their luck. I am not, as well, speaking about a person of contempt who would exploit a person less aware than they in matters of finance or wealth.

No, I am talking about the real thing, the large scavenger birds that swoop down and peck away at the flesh and bones of actual dead animals. Usually in very plain view.

It occurred to me on a recent morning trip from West Chester to Downingtown along the banks of the aforementioned Brandywine Creek that had my friends, in their quest to convey to me the majesty of Chester County, told me about the vultures then, I might had made a different choice in 1980 other than to pack up my few belongings and cart them through the Tuscarora and Kittatinny tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to ultimately settle here in West Chester.

Along Route 322 that morning, I saw two groups of large turkey vultures – or were they black vultures – scavenging their way through a couple of deer carcasses in plain view of just about an motorist that happened by. It was disconcerting to say the least for a person of my background. I grew up in the genteel districts of Cincinnati, Ohio, where the only vultures that were about were the metaphorical ones. In my book, vultures were creatures that lived in the western landscape of “Bonanza” or the “Wild, Wild West” or, in extreme situations at a local drive-in, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

At best, vultures in my background came in the form of Beaky Buzzard, the Looney Toons character who was so hapless and forlorn that no thoughts of harm or calamity could be associated with him. They were not real, and in no way could I have imagined from watching Beaky Buzzard cartoons that real vultures would vomit on me if I approached them and frightened them. I am fairly certain that had my friends in 1980 mentioned the slim possibility of encountering vulture vomit if I moved to Chester County that I would have been given pause, as they say, before loading up the Dodge Dart and driving cross country.

But here I am, finding myself in a world populated by vultures. It is not something I would have chosen, but find myself having to live with as best I can. Sort of like Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama.

I would say that among the things that keep me here is the encounter I had not many weeks after seeing the vultures on that same route between West Chester and Downingtown. As I drove by the Gibson Covered Bridge, a shadow passed across my windshield and I saw a wide expanse of wings above me. As in the distance flying high was a Bald Eagle, one I have heard makes a trip or two the Brandywine now and again.

Had my friends told me in 1980 of the presence in Chester County of a friendly Bald Eagle that might appear to me out of the blue on a fall morning, I am certain what my ultimate destination would have been.

Michael P. Rellahan is a staff writer at the Daily Local News. Follow him on Twitter at @ChescoCourtNews